Is It Really a Personal Relationship With God?

I have devoted much of my life to helping teens learn more about Christ and His mission on Earth. Most of this work has centered around the traditional christian principles and what we have come to believe as truths. One-way to God, His death and resurrection, personal relationship, bibilical truth, etc.. were all tenets that I shared with them. It never occurred to me that teens, in this day and age, do not accept, at face value, what their parents, adults, ministers and peers tell them. They are sophisticated and will search for themselves, truth. My mission now is to give young people the freedom to question and determine, for themselves, what is true and believeable and what is not. Let’s face it, we believe, we do not know and to tell kids otherwise does them a supreme disservice.

As I shared in a previous post, to believe that the Bible is infallible and the literal Word of God is questionable. Young people can see the fallicy in this…man has been imperfect from his creation (even man’s creation is open to interpretation), disobedient from the first words uttered. So why do we somehow, now believe that man could write a perfect document or collection of documents? If we can step back from our puritanical upbringings, possibly we can understand why more and more young people turn away from God and the church than come to Him.

One of the more confusing notions for kids to grasp is the idea that we can have a “personal relationship” with God. Although it can be argued, that by some literal definition this could be true, students and I would have to say even adults understand a personal relationship vastly differently. God does not speak in a literal voice, there is no two-way communication, we cannot see or touch God…there is no tangible way to have a personal relationship with Him, as most people understand it.

We see God through the life of Christ, we understand Him by understanding His love for us, (also through Christ) we see Him in the complexity of our being and universe…this is our relationship. We believe based on faith and nothing else. Rather than trying to convince others that they must believe in Adam and Eve, Noah, personal relationships with the Almighty God, hell, etc…, maybe it would be better for us to simply share our understanding of what Christ wanted for us to live a life fulfilled (humility, love, integrity, compassion, generosity and a host of other of His teachings) These are the tangible truths that kids can get their minds around.